Years ago, with a different microcontroller, I made a "wake-up system" that fades-in a light over my bed over a 10-minute period. Once I made a microcontroller based dimmer (with a TRIAC and a special opto-isolator) the rest was easy!
It's also has a gentle beeper that beeps to count the minutes after the 10 minutes is up.. At 11 minutes it beeps once. Again at 11:30... Two beeps at 12:00 and again at 12:30, etc. for 15 minutes and hopefully by then I'm out of bed.
I "cheated" on the real time clock and used my X-10 home automation system. The thing I built plugs-into a controlled outlet. Now, I have a Z-Wave home automation system with the same old wake-up system.